Progresses and Goals - October 15

Hello from this little fellow! 

The past week has been a time of resetting up the routines of fall and winter - growing barley fodder indoors for the animals, starting up my microgreens, and doing some neglected cleaning.

It's also been a fun time of a new crochet project that looks like cable knitting, of which I am incapable.

And then there were two, one larger than the first, with an even larger third one in the works.

This is the yarn I've been using from Hobby Lobby. The pattern is from https://brianakdesigns.com/. She has quite a few beautiful patterns I might try.

 After a tasty breakfast of fried quail eggs on sourdough mini-loaf toast, I started collecting more eggs to incubate as I continue to try to build my flock.

The cuteness of the eggs continues to tickle me, but they are packed with so much nutrition, more than the equivalent in chicken eggs.

And of course the chicks are cute, too. I have to put them in an enclosed container to carry them from incubator to brooder because they tend to pop like popcorn. 😑 I now have 13 in the brooder and will start up the incubator this weekend for another batch.

Goals for this week

Homemaking 

* Can the rest of the carrots

* Continue total house surface cleaning

* Get back into regular cleaning routine

Homesteading

* Get cages ready for new quails

* Finish second quail egg holder

* Start incubator again

Reading and Study

* Catch up on Homesteading Monthly magazines

* Continue The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George

* Order new copies of The Lord of the Rings books now that I've reread The Hobbit

* Daily personal growth studies of Now That Faith Has Come: A Study of Galatians and weekly ladies' Bible study group

Crafts

* Finish third crocheted pumpkin

* Finish "Happy Fall, Y'all" cross-stitch - the stitching's done so it just needs mounting

* Finish last block(s) of Sew Scrappy Spools

* Start next Christmas wallhanging

* Bind Christmas wallhanging

* Bind Autumn Jubilee quilt

Whew! I'm tired out just looking at all that and that list doesn't even take into account the regular daily work/play. Guess I'd better get at it!

Have a great week!

Ahhhtumn! That Beautiful, Busy Time of Year

 My cross-stitch is almost done and I should be able to enjoy the finished product for awhile before winter hits. Hooray!

Our northern Michigan autumns are really very colorfully beautiful. This year the colors seem to be turning a little later than usual, but we have some.

And there are the die-hard color-producing asters, bless them.

The recent big excitement on our little homestead is the successful incubation and hatching of about 10 coturnix quail eggs, so far. 

And we enjoyed some of the eggs for breakfast today. The progress in growing our flock is fun and encouraging. I got to take about 20 hard-boiled eggs to church fellowship brunch last Sunday and people enjoyed them.

With my meager carpentry skills and help from my darling husband, we built a cool egg holder that will hold 20 eggs per level, my daily goal for our personal eating. I hope to sell the excess. I have another holder in the works to cover six days. After that, they should go into the refrigerator.

I'd be happy to share measurements with anyone who might want them.

More busyness includes dehydrating onion scapes to turn into onion powder...

...pressure-canning three kinds of soups using a lot of the carrots purchased as Buy 2 Get 3 bags free...

...harvesting Swiss Chard and spinach and preparing to dehydrate some of them for morning smoothies...

...noticing that the make-shift swingset pole bean trellis still has quite a few beans, some quite edible...

...possibly finding a buyer for this lovely New Zealand doe who does a good job as a mama, but I just need to downsize a little...

...moving these goobers into their own cages now that they're 4.5 weeks old...

...and enjoying some cider and the coziness of fall.

Hope you're finding much to enjoy!

A New Start and Progress on Old Stuff

 Yeah, I started something new before I finished anything else. I resisted really hard, you know, but fell anyhow. You see, it's been over 40 years since I read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series, so I had determined to reread them all this fall and kind of immerse in the atmosphere. So, besides buying a cute sticker for my reading journal, I bought a cross-stitch pattern from CrossStitchBay on Etsy of the cozy hobbit house/hole. 

It's not a quick, simple pattern like I've been mostly doing lately and came in several pages which I had to tape together, but it's very clear and I'm following it pretty easily so far. I'm doing it on 18 count Aida instead of my usual 14 count, silly me, but I didn't want the finished product to be so large.

To go along with my LOTR immersion, I made Samwise's Rabbit Stew with Mushrooms and Po-tay-toes, Frodo's Scones (best with Second Breakfast), and Bilbo's Tea Cake to take to Sunday's church picnic. (September 22 is Bilbo's 111th birthday and Frodo's 33rd. So, yeah, I nerded out.

I did make some good progress on my Everyday Embroidery also.

I wish I knew how to circle or highlight the new stuff, but you get the idea. 

I've now filled in all the blocks/spaces I had laid out already, so I need to grab the yardstick and disappearing ink pen and mark out more blocks to outline in black and then fill in with cutesies.

I also got nine quarts of gifted tomatoes canned (my tomatoes didn't produce too well, so I'm thankful for the gifted ones)...

...and seven pints of green beans. I think that's the last of the good beans now.

It's been fun having Mom here and getting to show her our lives here since she hasn't been able to visit this far north in a long time. 

Goals for this week:

* Progress on Hobbit Hole X-stitch

* Draw at least a month's worth of new spaces on Everyday Embroidery

* Figure out the "Word of the Year" pendant embroideries that I didn't get to last week

* Be patient till the girls get moved out on the 1st and I can get to my sewing machine 😄 They'll be close enough for visiting, but no longer in my sewing room.

* Transplant strawberries to fill another raised bed

* Tend incubator of quail eggs

* Continue building quail egg rack, little by little

Well, I hope your week is full of blessings and that you really notice them. 😍

Has It Really Been a Month?!

 Yup, it's been a month since I last posted. Summer busyness. So, let me show you some of said busyness...

CRAFTS

This finish became a birthday gift to the daughter who spent some time serving refugees in Ukraine where they grow a lot of sunflowers for the world. She is now temporarily staying in my sewing room as she and DD5 look for an affordable apartment nearby. There's precious little space in that room now filled with bedroom furniture also. 😑😊

So, it's a challenge to get at the sewing machine to get the binding put on this Autumn Jubilee quilt which I finally got back from the quilter who was delayed by serious health difficulties of her own as well as her husband's. 

As usual, she did a beautiful job.

I've been making steady progress on catching up on my Everyday Embroidery which I started in 2022 but didn't actually do every day.

Another finish was the #MyShepherdSAL where we were challenged to stitch something having to do with shepherds, sheep, or anything Christian. I chose this Bible verse and cobbled some patterns together, including a tiny sheep, and glued it all to my dad's former desk sign from his days as a missionary pastor in the Philippines. Don't you just love the beautiful carving?!

HOMESTEADING

The flower gardens did quite well even though I realized about halfway through the season that I needed to be watering everything a lot more.

My repurposed rusty swingset frame pole bean trellis did marvelously and is still producing well. The cucumber production wasn't all that great nor was my tomato harvest from a separate area.

The quails have started laying and I had an 11 egg spinach scramble, only 7 of which are already stirred in in this picture.

Here are 3 quail eggs next to 5 chicken eggs.

The rabbits are doing well though I had far too many at one time to deal with (24), so I'm happy to be back down to 4 breeders and only 12 babies. I plan to sell one of the does so as to not have to deal with so many at once. 

Adventures

Having a daughter now working at a local attraction and major wedding venue brings the privilege of a free tour with our own private tour guide.

I took far too many pictures, as is my way, which I won't bore you with, but here a few beauties:

Being a family of history nerds we were very interested in the history of the place which she was able to tell us.

Of course I had to take pictures of the quilts, at least the second of which was made by the current owner of the castle.

The next adventure was a little more melancholy as my brother, sis-in-law, Lovey, and I travelled to the Cleveland area to pack up my mom to move her to live with brother. The plus is that she's closer to me and safer not living alone anymore at 89 yo, but it was hard for her to leave where she's lived for over 20 years and the church with which she's been associated since middle school days.

Along the way of our travels, we discovered a cute diner in which were a bazillion signs on the walls, some of which were:

Another adventure involved getting to stay a night on the east coast of Michigan and therefore getting to see a gorgeous sunrise over Lake Huron as well as discover a cute coffee shop.

So, this week's plan to be awesome includes:

CRAFTS

* Continue to make good progress on Everyday Embroidery.

* At least cut off the extra batting and backing from Autumn Jubilee even if I can't get to my machine

* Kit up the "Word of the Year" medallions I want to embroider.

Homesteading

* Can the beans I picked today

* Transplant strawberries

* Root some willow bush branches for rabbit feed

* Incubate more quail eggs

* Help put firewood into newly revamped woodroom in basement

Adventures

* Get Mom from my brother's and bring here for a two-week stay

* Annual church picnic and cornhole tournament

* Maybe take Mom to Castle Farms

Let me leave you with these words of wisdom from Kyle Idleman's book, Don't Give Up: